26 Reasons to Love Portland Right Now

FreeDarko was a blog. FreeDarko was named after Darko
Milicic, a former NBA player who was not talented at playing basketball.
FreeDarko was the brainchild of Bethlehem Shoals, a Wieden + Kennedy
copywriter (real name: Nathaniel Friedman) whose analysis of the NBA was
often interrupted by digressive fantasias such as “If Dirk Nowitzki Was
a Chair, What Kind of Chair Would He Be?”

Shoals’
fusion of avant-garde comedy and incisive basketball analysis has
garnered him a lot of imitators. Few have taken his model to quite the
extremes as his hometown colleagues at the Portland Roundball
Society—who concentrate on the Trail Blazers in ways that usually
involve several references to dragons. A recent recap by Joe Swide of an
otherwise unremarkable Blazers win over the Minnesota Timberwolves
started with a long paragraph focusing on the possibility that
Timberwolves star Kevin Love missed the game because he was up all night
holding open a barf bag for a teammate vomiting raw goat.

These are, it goes without saying, the best Blazers game recaps in the city.AARON MESH.

NO. 19BECAUSEEVEN OUR CITY FATHERS WERE PROTO-HIPSTERS.

Image courtesy of Pittock

This year, Portland’s original hipster hangout is celebrating its centennial.

That, of course, is the Pittock Mansion, the 22-room West Hills estate built for Weekly Oregonian publisher Henry Pittock and his family.

Finished in 1914, the
mansion-turned-museum sits on 46 acres just north of West Burnside
Street. Take a tour, and you’ll learn about Pittock, his wife,
Georgiana, and their children. One thing becomes quickly apparent: These
pioneering Portlanders shared many of the same interests we do today,
including bicycling, ecologically responsible permaculture gardens,
hiking and crafting.

“It’s not as if they
were the only people in their time who were doing these sorts of
things,” says Marta Bones, executive director of the mansion. “But they
were very enthusiastic about them.”

Cycling, for
starters. Pittock, who wore a thick goatee and locally made wool
clothing, was known to take long rides on his fixie.

“He took it up later
in his life because bicycling wasn’t really a thing until the late
1800s, so he started bicycling when he was a senior,” Bones says. “But
he would bike all over.”

Sometimes Pittock rode all the way to his paper mill in Camas, Wash.—a 23-mile drive on modern roads.

Pittock was also an
outdoorsman, ascending Mount Hood four times. His love of the wilderness
extended to his own garden, which favored local plants in a
naturalistic setting. “There were plans drawn up for elaborate
gardens—terraced, manicured flower beds—and he didn’t do any of that,”
Bones says. “He said, ‘I like the forest how it is.’”

Georgiana favored
sewing and gardening. “You can think of her as a crafty, hands-on
person,” Bones says, “between all the rose gardening she did and the
sewing guild.”

The Pittocks also
liked to fiddle with then-modern devices: The mansion had lines for both
of Portland’s rival telephone services to keep the couple on top of
news and trends.

“He was always
working hard to find out the news early, so he was constantly trying to
be aware of what was going on locally,” Bones says. “They wanted to be
able to communicate with anyone they needed to, in the way we might have
an iPad and the best, fastest Internet connection.” MARTIN CIZMAR.

NO. 20BECAUSEWE’RE ABOUT TO FINISH THE ONLY BRIDGE IN THE COUNTRY THAT CARRIES TRAINS, BUSES, BIKES AND PEDESTRIANS BUT NO PERSONAL CARS

IMAGE: Emma Browne

NO. 21BECAUSEWE HAVE FAT VEGANS

Veganism has the tendency to be a scary
cult of consumption. Armed with an encyclopedic knowledge of
well-rehearsed, horrific details relating to the meal you’re trying to
eat, contentious vegans might just leave you facing a real moral
dilemma. Only if, however, those facts were being delivered by someone
obviously faster, stronger or prettier than yourself.

Fortunately, Portland has fat vegans.

You don’t have to
worry about whether someone might be a vegan; as the Facebook meme goes,
they’ll tell you. Here in Portland, though, the quickest way to spot
one in the wild is to visit a Voodoo Doughnut and look for any
individuals breathing laboriously and breaking a sweat from standing on
their tiptoes to see the vegan offerings of the top shelf. This is
apparently the proper position to assume when working to demonstrate the
superiority of their diet for the economy, the ecology and personal
health.

Our
fat vegans serve as proof there are no hidden paths to happiness. They
show us that morality doesn’t arise from that which is best for other
beings, but rather that the true meaning of life is about justifying
one’s own desires and indulging without remorse before ever having to
deal with the consequences of those actions. And that even vegan fare
can, indeed, be all too delicious. RIAN NIELSEN.

NO. 22BECAUSE WE ARE NOW THE OFFICIAL ARBITERS OF GOOD COFFEE

Portland has long claimed to be the
nation’s best coffee city. Since October, when the Alliance for Coffee
Excellence opened an office here, we’re actually the official deciders
of the world’s best beans.

“We’re
in the mecca,” says Anna Abatzoglou of the ACE. “Portland very much
treasures quality, and our program is about quality coffee.”

The ACE is a global not-for-profit organization that owns and operates the “Olympics of coffee,” known as the Cup of
Excellence. It was founded in 2002 in Missoula, Mont., and still
maintains its headquarters there. But, as it expanded, the organization
wanted to open an office in a city more accommodating to coffee-world
dignitaries and a large base of serious baristas.

That
was neither Seattle nor San Francisco. “It was definitely always
Portland,” Abatzoglou says. “I think Portland has a spirit, a vibe going
that is conducive to what’s happening in speciality coffee.”

The
Cup of Excellence involves coffee-bean farmers from 10 countries in
Africa and the Americas. Their beans go through a three-week competition
where thousands of samples are cupped using a ceramic glass and a
bowl-shaped spoon, with scoring based on acidity, sweetness, flavor and
aftertaste. “You want to get the proper extraction from the coffee, and
there’s this very strict protocol for cupping, especially for Cup of
Excellence,” Abatzoglou says. Once the winners are chosen, the coffee is
priced and sold at auction. Sisters Coffee Co., Nossa Familia and
Nordstrom Cafe currently serve Cup of Excellence coffee in Portland.

Abatzoglou
says the farmer who produces the superior beans is given roughly 85
percent of auction proceeds. The remaining 15 percent goes back to the
country coordinators of Cup of Excellence. “Portland really cares about
traceability and cares about a sustainable infrastructure,” Abatzoglou
says. “The coffee is the best coffee in the world, but it’s also a
win-win situation because it is the farmers who get rewarded.”
KATHRYN PEIFER.

NO. 23BECAUSEQUESTLOVE IS OBSESSED WITH US

The Eagles may have robbed Chip Kelly from the state of
Oregon, but that’s still a lopsided trade, considering that, long ago,
Portland stole of the heart of Philadelphia’s coolest son.

Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson—drummer for rap’s greatest live act, the Roots; walking music encyclopedia; Afro enthusiast; Time’s Coolest Person of 2013; and, as of last week, the new Tonight Show
bandleader—grew up in the city of brotherly love, dog-fighting
quarterbacks and winging batteries at Santa Claus. But if his current
job didn’t require him to stay in New York, he’d be kicking it in the
land of craft beer and roses.

“My
All-Time Favorite City In The World!” Thompson tweeted last June, when
he dropped in to DJ at the Do Over, a hip-hop day party at White Owl Social Club in Southeast Portland. That’s not an empty platitude of the sort rock
stars use to get cheap applause: He’s been shouting out Stumptown for
years. Back in 2008, when Rolling Stone asked him about the
places he’d most like to live, he said Portland tops his list “because
of its record stores—plus it has the most strip clubs in America per
capita.” Three years later, in Philadelphia magazine, Thompson
reiterated his infatuation, ranking us above Austin, Tokyo and, yes,
even Philadelphia, adding Nike headquarters and our “awesome throwback
’80s arcade” to his reasons for loving Portland.

The tourism bureau
might as well shred every livability study and whatever else it uses to
sell the city to outsiders: When a guy who’s jammed with Elvis Costello,
Jay-Z and President Obama is envious of our ability to play BurgerTime whenever we want, what other testimonial do you need?MATTHEW SINGER.

NO. 24BECAUSEPORTLAND IS QUICKLY GOING CASH-FREE

You’ll be telling your grandkids this story, and they won’t
believe you. In 2010, if you wanted a homemade Bosnian pita from a
trailer in front of the Governor Hotel, you had to pull wadded-up
fabric—laden with disease and cocaine—out of a strip of cow leather. And
the lady at the cart would actually trade that filth for delicious beef
burek and phyllo bread.

Well,
thank God, that’s almost over. Since the addition of point-of-sale card
readers such as Square, it’s gotten to the point where you can count
Portland’s cash-only restaurants on 10 knuckles. Lazy Portland has been a
ridiculously enthusiastic adopter of credit-card readers.

In 2012, our city was No. 1 in per-capita Square usage nationwide. Today, we’re still among the leading cities, while also usingscrappy,
local card-reader startups like Ulutu. We currently count 75,000 of
those little Square readers among the city’s merchants. That’s one for
every nine people in town. You can buy fresh raspberries with your debit
card at the freaking farmers market. You can use cards to pay for
parking. Just this year, Escape From New York Pizzabacked down from a
30-year cash-only policy. Beulahland, Dots Cafe and the Slammer Tavern
now take credit. Even the vast majority of food carts have little
readers on their phones and iPads—although notably not Burrasca, our
newly minted Food Cart of the Year.

Just
wait, in five years there will be protests at their doors. It’ll be
1968 all over again. It’ll be Apple’s “1984” commercial. Watch out.MATTHEW KORFHAGE.

NO. 25BECAUSETHE HOOLEY REATTACHED SOUTH PORTLAND TO THE CITY

IMAGE: Emma Browne

Imoved to Southwest Portland’s Corbett-Terwilliger-Lair Hill neighborhood 40 years ago, just before Willamette Week published its first issue. My house—heat, water and electricity included—totaled $90 a month.

Back
then, CTLH—which officially shortened its name to South Portland in
2006—was a hippie haven home to the city’s biggest LSD manufacturer. It
has everything I want: great neighbors, modest Victorian houses, a
grocery store across the street, easy access to I-5.

That last item
created the neighborhood’s one major drawback: The Willamette River lies
just a few hundred yards to the east, but it’s been largely
inaccessible since the freeway severed the neighborhood.

But, a few years
back, the city hung a tram on Pill Hill. With it came a sop to the
neighborhood in the form of a 700-foot steel-box girder bridge across
I-5 for pedestrians and cyclists. That bridge—officially named for
former U.S. Congresswoman Darlene Hooley but often mistakenly called the
Gibbs Street bridge—has changed the way my neighborhood relates to the
city. Suddenly, we’re connected to the waterfront parks, the new
Sellwood Bridge, the Hawthorne Bridge, the Esplanade and the streetcar
line that will soon be a complete loop between downtown and the east
side. In a year or so, it’ll be possible to bicycle from my house all
the way to Gresham while riding only a few blocks on city streets.

Gresham!

What could be better? RICHARD H. MEEKER.

NO. 26BECAUSEROBIN LOPEZ IS THE COOLEST GUY IN THE NBA

IMAGE: Jerek Hollender

Portland has a habit of falling for the wrong Blazers.

There was our fling
with Rudy Fernandez, who briefly enamored us with his exotic
Eurotrashiness before whining his way out of the league and back to
España. Patty Mills was sweet, but he was a certified towel-waver.
Channing Frye was certainly charming, and he reciprocated our feelings,
but his favorite restaurant was the Buffalo Gap in John’s Landing—major
red flag.

What we have with
Robin Lopez is different. He’s different. He’s a lot like us. He loves
comic books. He’s obsessed with all things Disney. He uses Twitter and
Instagram to make references to Boy Meets World and The Goonies
and crushing on Emmy Rossum. He plays Bruce Springsteen deep cuts as
his pregame warm-up music. In a city of overgrown man-children, the
Blazers’ starting center is the biggest kid of all. If he didn’t look
like a walking oak tree and speak in the rumbling baritone of an orc
standing guard over a medieval castle, he wouldn’t appear out of place
hanging on a porch in Southeast Portland, ranking Harry Potter
characters and arguing the merits of traditional cartoon animation
versus CGI.

These are not things
NBA players are supposed to care about. Professional athletes are
celebrated for having a single-minded focus on the game—see the media’s
exaltation of near-sociopaths Kobe Bryant and Derrick Rose. When Lopez
and his twin brother, Brook, were at Stanford, Sports Illustrated and The New York Times
wrote profiles gawking at their love of video games and Michael
Jackson. But Robin has never played up his outside interests for
marketing purposes. He isn’t trying to brand himself as the NBA player
non-basketball fans can relate to. He’s just a 7-foot, 255-pound
rebounding machine, who also happens to rock a big reddish-brown ’fro
and have strong opinions on wizards.

Lopez doesn’t seem to
know why any of this makes him cool—which is precisely why he’s the
coolest guy in the league. And as long as the Blazers keep winning with
him in the middle, he’s ours. May this relationship live long and
prosper.MATTHEW SINGER.

ˆ[This article previously listed the wrong location for the Do Over hip hop party. This has been corrected.]